Synagogue continued on C2
HAMILTON — The Beth Israel Synagogue in Hamilton is celebrating its 100th anniversary this month.
Except for the 10 years he served in the military and went to college, David S. Hirsh has been a member.
Now 91 years old, the retired dentist recalls attending Schul in the first synagogue, a warehouse across the street from Joe’s Fix-It Shop, on the corner of Fifth and Charles streets on Hamilton’s East Side.
It was a facility “dark and unadorned, with steep wooden steps leading to a spacey, stark interior,” Hirsch said. “During this period, we were habitually serviced by temporary, itinerant Rabbis.”
The congregation’s roots, however, date back to 1901 when eight Jewish families — the entire Orthodox population of Hamilton at the time — gathered in a member’s home as an alternative to the Reform Temple that was already in place on High Street since the 1880s, now a Baptist church.
“There were about 250 Jewish families in Hamilton at the time,” said Rabbi Eric Slaton. “The Reformed congregation was much more assimilated and their service was mostly in English, and there were immigrants who wanted a more traditional service. At board meetings, when it got heated, they would revert to Yiddish and yell back and forth at each other.
“They were not very educated and came to America to create a new community,” he said. “The created an infrastructure for a Jewish community that was pretty much the way it is today.”
The group was formally chartered in October 1911, under the name Bais Israel. They met in members’ homes and other locations until moving into the warehouse a few years later.
In 1923, 36 women of the congregation organized the Ladies Auxiliary with the purpose of raising funds from a new synagogue building. In 1929, they selected the site of the current building at Sixth and Butler streets and broke ground just days before the stock market crash that started the Great Depression. In 1931, when the building was dedicated, the congregation had grown to 60 families.
Hirsch had his Bar Mitzvah in 1933, and believes he may have been the first one to do so in the new building.
When he was a teenager during the Great Depression, he had the job of riding his bicycle to members’ homes to collect their dues.
“Although the dues were only $25 or $50 a year, people wouldn’t write out a check for the whole amount,” he said. “So I would go and collect 50 cents or a dollar a week, and they would often tell me to come back later because they weren’t ready,” Hirsch said.
With its new social hall, Beth Israel became an important stop for Zionist leaders who would pass through to raise money and support for the founding of the nation of Israel.
Throughout the years, Beth Israel began to modernize its ritual and outlook, eventually shedding its Orthodoxy to become part of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism as the Reformed congregation merged with a Cincinnati temple and moved out of town.
In celebration of its 100th anniversary, Beth Israel extracted a time capsule that had been placed in the cornerstone when the current synagogue was built, containing newspaper articles and various artifacts of the time and the history of the congregation.
On Friday, they will hold celebratory services with a visiting Rabbi and another service on Saturday morning where they will honor the long-standing members of the congregation, which will be followed by a reception at the Coach House at Berkley Square.
In November, they will replace the time capsule in the cornerstone with photocopies of the documents they extracted because they have become too fragile to be handled again, along with a new set of artifacts.
For more information on the Beth Israel Synagogue and its celebrations, call (513) 868-2049.
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.
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